Therefore, it’s not surprising that once again, our Mr. Olsen is a victim of circumstance. Follow the bouncing ball….

The good: Last year, starting in Action Comics #493, Jimmy got a great new co-feature by the very talented team of writer Nick Spencer, penciller R.B. Silva, and inker DYM.*

The bad: The feature was yanked after four installments when DC decided to discontinue all the co-features.

The good: Spencer, Silva, and DYM got to finish “Jimmy Olsen’s Big Week” in the pages of the probably-still-on-sale Jimmy Olsen Special, which runs 58 pages (including parts 1-4) and is well worth your $5.99. Really, this story couldn’t be more fun if it were called Superman’s Pal Scott Pilgrim.

The popular supporting character, played by actress Allison Mack, was created specifically for the television series, and introduced in the 2001 pilot. She was set to be integrated into DC’s comic-book continuity in 2008 but those plans fell apart. However, the publisher at last announced in July at Comic-Con International that Chloe will have a recurring role in the Jimmy Olsen co-feature by Nick Spencer and R.B. Silva that kicks off with this month’s Action Comics.

Spencer, who’s best known for his Image Comics series Existence 3.0 and Morning Glories, tells TV Guide he had to make some changes to the character’s history to enable her to fit into the established DC timeline.

“It’s a pretty different continuity, which I think has always been the challenging part of bringing Chloe into the DC Comics Universe,” he says. “She’s never existed in the comics before, so in order to make a part of Clark’s life when he was a teenager in Smallville, you’d have to do it somewhat retroactively, and it would age Chloe as a character a lot, since Superman is well past that part of his life in the books.”

Back in 2007, there was talk of Smallville‘s Chloe Sullivan making the jump from the long-running TV show to the comics world. It ended up not happening at the time, but if you’re a fan of the character played for so long by Allison Mack, you’re in luck — Chloe will appear in the Jimmy Olsen co-feature that’s debuting in Action Comics #893 and being written by Nick Spencer.